


The Bite That Binds the Gift That Gives

by swearwollf



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Biting, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Emotional Slowburn, Hand Jobs, Jack has something called an emotion and he doesn't know what it is or what to do with it, Kidnapping, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Power Imbalance, Unreliable Narrator, werewolf!Handsome Jack, werewolf-typical violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23553436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swearwollf/pseuds/swearwollf
Summary: A little taste for violence is necessary when working at Hyperion- that just comes with the territory- and Handsome Jack brings a whole new meaning to the phrase.  His taste for Rhys, though, is a different story.OR, the one where Jack is a werewolf in space and Rhys is his... something.
Relationships: Handsome Jack/Rhys (Borderlands)
Comments: 62
Kudos: 210





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> huge thanks to basia and sasha for the beta and to all my friends for cheering me on
> 
> title is from wolf like me by tv on the radio

_This is the worst day of my life_ , Rhys thinks as he stands outside of Henderson’s- no, _Vasquez’s_ now, shit. Outside of _Vasquez’s_ office, of all people, blood still dripping from his nose where he’d been suckerpunched by the asshole. This is _definitely_ the worst day of Rhys’s life. Worse than the day he lost his arm. Worse even than the days spent staring at computer screens with a migraine after his ECHO eye had been installed, not enough sick time to let him rest during his full recovery.

Assistant Vice Janitor. His life is ruined.

“Rhys? What just happened in there, bro?” Vaughn asks at his elbow, eyebrows angled in concern. 

Rhys dabs at his bloody nose, grimacing at the pain, and begins to walk. He better not need medical for this. God, he probably doesn’t even have insurance anymore. “Vasquez killed Henderson and stole my promotion,” he replies flatly. “Demoted me. _Assistant Vice Janitor_.”

“That’s. No. Rhys, he can’t do that to us! That promotion was yours!” Vaughn goes rigid with indignation, furious, before all that energy leaves him like air from a balloon and he returns to his usual slump. “What are we gonna do, man?”

What are they gonna do, indeed? Abruptly, Rhys feels a smug, giddy sort of energy wash through him. Vasquez may think he’s won, but that call he took… Rhys didn’t get where he is now by not taking advantage of every opportunity that presented itself. Well, where he was. But he’ll get back up there! Especially with information on a vault key. Information that, when it comes into the right hands, could destroy Vasquez. Rhys whirls to take Vaughn by the shoulders triumphantly.

“I have a plan,” Rhys blurts. “But first, we have to find Yvette.”

“Plan? What plan?” Vaughn asks, ignoring the second half of what Rhys said in his excitement.

“It might,” Rhys leans in to whisper conspiratorially to his best bro, even though there isn’t a single other soul to be seen in the hallway, “involve a vault key.”

“A vaul-!” Rhys claps his hand over Vaughn’s mouth before he can exclaim the words too loudly in the quiet hallway. The walls have ears, after all. And there’s, like, robots everywhere too probably, who knows who they report to. Surreptitiously, Rhys turns to look over his shoulder. No one there, just a distant cleaner bot and the Handsome Jack cutout standee at the end of the hall behind Vaughn. He turns back around, some sharp words on the tip of his tongue, when something catches his eye over Vaughn’s head.

The standee moves. Rhys does a quick double take, because there are standees of Handsome Jack all over the station and none of them actually move, maybe he can get one for his apartment-

Ah. That’s not a standee. That’s actually Handsome Jack. And he looks _pissed._

Handsome Jack’s face creases into a mask of rage, baring his teeth into a rictus of aggression. And his eyes, they aren’t right. Rhys has seen the man’s face on posters all over Helios- hell, all over his bedroom walls, and he knows those characteristic mismatched eyes well. One blue and one green. But his right eye, the blue one, is blooming into the hot yellow of molten gold. 

“My bad, bro.” Vaughn says apologetically as he pulls Rhys’s hand away from his mouth. “Uh, you okay? You look a little spooked.”

His friend’s voice sounds very far away over all the blood rushing in Rhys’s ears. Rhys is pretty sure his face must be white as a sheet. He feels lightheaded with terror.

“Vaughn, run,” he whispers.

“What?” 

Handsome Jack turns fully towards them and Rhys feels like he’s under a spotlight, exposed. He’s never been in the same room as the CEO of his company, had no idea of the intensity of his focus. His eyes are two burning brands searing into Rhys’s thoughts, sucking up all of Rhys’s attention, leaving Rhys with the uncomfortable feeling that Jack can read his thoughts like they’re being projected on the wall next to him.

He takes a step forward and Rhys breaks, fleeing like a new hire hearing their first scream.

Rhys’s instincts have always leaned more towards flight rather than fight when he doesn’t think he can talk his way out of something, and any inclination to try fast-talking Handsome Jack is bypassed by the sheer predatory energy with which Jack is making his way down the corridor. Some small, scared animal part of Rhys’s brain has taken over. He’ll feel guilty later for how he leaves his best friend behind, but for now all he can do is run for his life.

“What the hell, bro!” Vaughn shouts in surprise. Rhys hears him yelp followed shortly by a thud as he’s presumably thrown against the wall, but Rhys can’t take the time to turn and look. He can hear Jack’s footsteps charging after him. Rhys thinks he has the advantage in stride, one of the many advantages of long legs, but he’s also pretty sure Jack gets a lot more physical activity than him seeing as he’s constantly down on Pandora exterminating bandits or even up on Helios strangling his employees. 

But Rhys has no exit strategy. Even if he could make it to one of the docking bays, there’s no way he could get past security and onto a ship. And where would he go? Pandora?

Shit, he’s so screwed. Shit, shit, shit.

Rhys has no idea where he’s going, but he’s led Jack out of the empty corridors and into some more populous areas near the main offices on this floor. His coworkers are absolutely no help at all, though, scattering and throwing themselves out of the way once they see who’s behind him. He can’t even use them as human flak to trip up his pursuer. 

And his expensive skagskin boots allow him very little purchase on the slick, shining floors of Helios. Every time he skids around a corner, he can feel Handsome Jack getting closer. Can hear him growling, snarling even. Soon enough the small crowds give way to vacant corridors again as Rhys continues his flight into what seems to be some empty rooms used for storage. He can’t have been running for more than 5 minutes but he’s already flagging.

It’s at about this point that Rhys realizes he’s actually slowed down considerably and Handsome Jack should definitely have caught him by now. In fact, it feels like he’s maintaining the distance, close enough for Rhys to feel him on his heels, far enough to have the illusion that escape is still possible. And it occurs to him, then, that he’s actually being herded somewhere.

That’s probably bad, right? If he’s being chased to a certain location that means his pursuer has plans for him. What’s stopping him from murdering Rhys in front of witnesses? He _literally_ owns this station.

Rhys isn’t sure he wants to find out. They’re still on the same floor as where they started, but they’ve gotten far enough away from the offices that he doesn’t expect he’ll be seeing anyone again. He’s pretty sure this part of the floor is mainly used for server space.

_Fuck this_ , Rhys thinks, and forces himself stop running. To his surprise, he’s not instantly mowed over and murdered then and there. They both stand there for a long moment, frozen, Rhys feeling the other man’s presence on his back like a raging sun. Over the sound of his own gasping breaths he can hear Handsome Jack’s quiet, inhuman growling. _He_ at least doesn’t seem winded.

Summoning the tattered vestiges of his courage, Rhys slowly turns to face the source of that animal sound. The look on Handsome Jack’s face almost makes him turn right back around. The eye that should be blue is still a hot, blazing yellow and his teeth… seem a little bigger than they should be, a little sharper. And his expression is, uh, intense. Like he might eat Rhys for lunch.

They stare at each other for a long moment, Rhys fixed in place with the lizardbrain instinct that moving would reveal his location to a predator, and Handsome Jack… Rhys has no idea what’s going on with him but at least he’s stopped growling.

“Who are you?” When Handsome Jack does talk, there’s still some of that growl in his voice and the words sound a little awkward, like maybe his new fangs are in the way. Literal fangs? Figurative? Is Rhys hallucinating? He doesn’t actually know what was in his breakfast, come to think of it.

Rhys clears his throat so his voice hopefully won’t crack with fear. “I’m Rhys Strongfork? I work in Prop-”

“No, I mean-” Handsome Jack interrupts himself with a vicious snarl, making Rhys jerks in place with fear. “What are you? Why do you smell like that?”

Oh shit, what _does_ he smell like? Rhys just barely restrains himself from doing something embarrassing like raising his arm to check if he forgot to apply deodorant that morning. 

“S-smell like?” Rhys stammers. “Smell like what exactly, sir?”

Handsome Jack steps forward and seizes Rhys by the front of his shirt, dragging him forward. But instead of thinking about how he’s definitely about to die, Rhys for whatever reason fixates on how they’re very nearly the same height. He’s struck by the ridiculously suicidal urge to lean forward and kiss the man in front of him. 

Rhys is so distracted that he doesn’t realize his shirt is being undone until Handsome Jack is already on the second button. He lets out an undignified squawk of protest but he doesn’t actually try to intervene, completely baffled that this is even happening to him. Handsome Jack ignores him anyway, peeling back Rhys’s collar to expose his tattoo. With neither explanation nor hesitation, he presses his face into the newly available space on Rhys’s shoulder and takes a deep breath.

Okay, what?

“Are you _smelling_ me?” Rhys is unable to keep his incredulity out of his tone, but he goes completely ignored. Instead, the other man opens his mouth and presses his teeth lightly to the skin now bared to him. He drags them just slightly over Rhys’s collarbone, and something about their uncanny sharpness on sensitive skin tickles a little. Rhys twitches, stifling a giggle giddy with unfortunately horny fear. 

Either the sound or the movement triggers something, because Handsome Jack lets go of Rhys’s shirt to clamp his hands onto Rhys’s body. One goes to the shoulder opposite where his teeth are set, the other to his upper arm. They clench down with uncomfortable force, as though worried his captive might make a run for it again. But the most alarming part is that he also bites down harder. 

Rhys lost his arm and eye in an accident before he even came to Hyperion, and the ECHO eye and bionic arm were installed shortly after. Ever since, his pain tolerance has been completely shot. Something like stubbing his toe can be enough to make him woozy to the point of passing out and adrenaline seems to only ever make it worse. So when he feels teeth break skin, he… Well, he freaks out a little.

With a sound that might uncharitably be called a shriek, Rhys tries to jerk away, but this makes Handsome Jack clenches down harder. His hands clutch bruises into Rhys’s skin and his teeth cut right into the meat. Rhys bucks in his grip with a wail but he can’t shake him loose and the movement just makes those teeth cut in deeper. The only thing that keeps him from passing then and there is the adrenalin. 

Rhys does the only thing he can think of: he punches his boss with his bionic arm. Although technically stronger than his flesh arm, Rhys doesn’t have the time or the actual know-how to strike effectively, but he still manages to get a blow in on the other man’s ribs. His only saving grace is that his fist is made of metal and when it hits, Handsome Jack grunts in pained surprise before releasing Rhys from his bite but not his hands.

“What _the fuck_ was that, kiddo?” Handsome Jack snarls directly into Rhys’s face. 

“You _bit_ me!” is the only retort Rhys can manage before he notices the blood on the other man’s teeth. The sight sends a swooping sensation through his whole body, like bad turbulence when reentering atmosphere. Then the high notes of pain from his shoulder start registering, crowding any thoughts out of his head and making his vision go spotty. The last thing he sees before darkness overtakes his vision is Handsome Jack grimace in alarm. In his last hazy, hallucinatory moment of consciousness, he thinks Jack might even look concerned.

Yeah, right.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again to basia and sasha for the beta. all remaining mistakes are mine
> 
> sorry for the delay, ive been *gestures vaguely at own head* y'know

Rhys wakes slowly. His bed is so warm and comfortable, the room itself kept just chilly enough to make waking up an unwelcome task when wrapped in the soft embrace of expensive sheets. His cybernetic arm is off, allowing him to lie on his side unharassed by metal poking him in the ribs. He presses his face into his pillow and breathes in deep. The smell is unfamiliar but pleasant, spicy like gunpowder and clove, and he basks in it for a moment. He doesn’t recall getting a new detergent but he likes it.

It’s when Rhys stretches luxuriously that he registers all his hurts. His muscles ache pleasantly as though from exercise but his shoulder is a different matter, a more aggressive pain that suggests maybe he should wake up  _ right now _ .

He also realizes that despite being stretched to his full length, his toes aren’t meeting the end of the bed.

Therefore, this is  _ not, _ in fact, his bed.

Rhys sits up abruptly, hauling the blankets up with him like a protective shield. He’s in an absolutely massive bed in a completely unfamiliar but spacious room with absurdly lofty ceilings. One wall is entirely glass and looks out on Elpis, the moon’s purple glow the only light in the room still bright enough to make it apparent that Rhys is alone. There is nothing else on the walls to mark where he is, no pictures or paintings, just bare… is that marble? Just bare white marble veined in gray, holy shit it must have been so expensive.

Rhys takes stock. He’s in a strange yet extravagant room, missing his cybernetic arm, and apparently alone. Lowering the blankets, he sees he’s not even in his own clothes anymore. His button down shirt and red tie have been replaced by a well worn yellow t-shirt, the Hyperion logo barely visible on its front. Further investigation reveals he’s no longer in his slacks either, instead wearing soft pajama pants, blue with white stripes.

Wow, okay. Rhys isn’t sure what to think of this. The last thing he remembers is being accosted by Handsome Jack, which was kinda cool even if he was scared the whole time and sure he was about to die. And also getting bitten? Rhys isn’t strictly averse to the idea, he would just appreciate some forewarning next time. And, like, maybe some foreplay or something.

Which means Handsome Jack probably left him in this room. And changed his clothes. Saw him  _ naked _ . Oh, that’s really unfair.

Rhys throws his legs over the side of the bed and stands up. His bare feet sink into an opulently plush rug and he realizes his socks are gone too. After a moment of embarrassed hesitation, Rhys pulls the waistband of the pajama pants back to make sure he’s at least still wearing his own underwear. He is, thank god. When Rhys lets go of the waistband, it snaps him in the stomach. He sighs and scrubs his hand across his face, feeling unaccountably tired despite just waking up.

He should probably contact Vaughn. Rhys would normally do this via his palm, but with his arm missing he tries to send a message directly through his ECHOeye. Tries. His eye tells him he has no connection, that his message will be sent the next time he’s on a network. But he’s on Helios; there should be no dead spots on this station. Alarmed, he turns to scan the moon outside the window. The eye gives him the usual information: population, history, major exports. So it  _ is _ working, at least for receiving information. But there’s nothing new in his emails since this morning, and no new messages either.

That’s… probably not good?

Out of ideas, Rhys steps off the rug and onto the marble floors in search of an exit. Surprisingly, one opens for him immediately; what was once a seamless stone wall depresses into itself and slides away to reveal a door.

Steeling himself, Rhys steps through and is immediately struck in the face by the wonderful aroma of cooking food. The smells of garlic and hot cheese run a full-frontal assault on his olfactory nerve and Rhys’s mouth begins to water. It hadn’t occurred to him to be hungry until now, but he is  _ starving. _ His stomach growls piteously.

“Finally awake now, are ya, princess?” And across the ostentatious yet stately living room with its bold blacks and flashy gold accents is Handsome Jack, standing in what appears to be a state of the art self-cook kitchen. His jacket and vest are off, tossed carelessly over the back of a black leather couch, and the sleeves of his shirt and sweater are pushed to his elbows. He’s setting a pan of something on the counter between them.

_ Okay, you are apparently in  _ Handsome Jack’s  _ home.  _ Rhys thinks, mind racing.  _ Play it cool, Rhys. Don’t be a nerd. _

But the first thing that comes out of his mouth is: “Did you change my clothes while I was unconscious?” 

Handsome Jack laughs at him, throws his head back and slaps the black marble countertop like that is the funniest and stupidest thing Rhys could have said. Rhys flushes.

“Oh, calm down, I left your undies on. Cute, by the way. Hyperion brand boxer-briefs? They’re a little short, aren’t they?” Jack waggles his eyebrows suggestively, grinning.

“I’m really tall, it’s hard to- don’t distract me!” Rhys is even redder in the face now, making Handsome Jack’s grin grow wider. At least  _ he’s _ having fun.

“Yes, I did change your clothes,” he condescends, “because there was blood on your shirt. Also, it was hideous. Do you dress yourself? That tie, you keep that thing  _ tucked into _ your pants?” 

“You’re one to talk, Mr. I-wear-a-sweater-under-a-dress-shirt-under-a-vest!” Rhys retorts hotly before he remembers just who he’s talking to. “Sir.”

Handsome Jack laughs again, but this time it’s more pointed. Measured, like he’s weighing something in Rhys’s reaction.

“You can call me Jack, pumpkin.” He’s watching Rhys with intent yet unreadable eyes, but the fearsome gold from yesterday is gone. Rhys wonders if he even really saw it in the first place. 

“Uh,” is Rhys’s intelligent reply. 

“Uh,”  _ Jack _ mocks cheerfully, “Sit down and eat, dum-dum. I can hear your stomach growling from here.”

Warily, Rhys crosses the room and pulls out a barstool opposite of Jack. Jack! He gets to call him Jack! His brain pingpongs furiously between terror, confusion, and giddiness. Jack cuts into what turns out to be a lasagna and places a large piece on a plate. He slides the plate across the counter with a fork before serving himself. Rhys stares down at his lasagna to save himself from Jack’s intense eye contact. It smells heavenly and somehow looks even better. Rhys’s stomach growls again so he takes a bite.

The cheese burns his mouth in the way only hot cheese can, but it tastes so good that Rhys powers through it. He’s pretty sure he made an obscene sound but he can’t find it within himself to care.

“Oh my god,” Rhys garbles around a mouth full of lasagna, “this is so good.”

Jack looks supremely smug as he digs in to his own plate. “Good, ‘cause it took me like three hours to make. Had to do something while you were out like a friggin’ light. Made the pasta, too, a while back, had it frozen.”

“You  _ made _ this?” Then, belatedly, “Wait. I was asleep for three hours? I have to get back to work!”

And then Rhys remembers he doesn’t even  _ have _ a job.

The years of work slogging from the lowest tiers of Data Mining to his middle management position in Securities Propaganda. His sleepless, caffeine-fueled time in university. His cutthroat internship. His  _ debt _ . All for nothing.

He doesn’t realize Jack is talking to him until he snaps his fingers right in front of his nose. Rhys jerks back, startled.

“What?”

“I  _ said, _ ” Jack sneers, annoyed, “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I. What?”

“‘What?’” Jack repeats meanly. “I coulda sworn you had a working brain in there somewhere, cupcake. You’re not leaving until I know why I bit you.”

“ _ What?! _ ” Rhys shouts this time.

“Oh my god, say ‘what’ again.”

“You don’t even know why you bit me?”

Jack places his fork down and leans across the counter menacingly at Rhys. Rhys notices a splotch of red on the white collar of his shirt and hopes it’s the tomato sauce and not his own blood from earlier in the day.

“You are not. Going.  _ Anywhere. _ Until I figure out why you smell like that.”

Fuck this, now Rhys is getting pissed off too. “Smell like what, Jack? Dinner? What the fuck is wrong with you? You can’t just go around biting then kidnapping people, you psycho!”

With a snarl, Jack lunges across the countertop at Rhys. Rhys squawks and knocks his barstool over in his haste to get away, but Jack is already coming around the counter after him, bearing down on him like a desert storm, all tearing winds and rending lightning. Rhys trips over the barstool and lands elegantly on his ass and Jack follows after him, stooping like a diving rakk to pin him in place on the floor. Jack sits on Rhys’s middle and wraps one big hand around Rhys’s neck. The other hand he uses to lower himself down so their faces are mere inches apart.

Now that he’s living it, Rhys realizes, he’s had some really inappropriate fantasies.

“Wanna try that again, Rhysie?” This close, Rhys can feel Jack’s breath on his face. His eyes shutter closed as he feels the pressure tighten minutely and begin to hinder his breathing. He realizes he hasn’t even raised a hand to defend himself; his arm is still lax at his side. He didn’t know Jack knew his name.

Rhys forces his eyes open and stares straight up at Jack. “You can’t just keep me here.”

Jack stares back for a long moment, face twisted in fury. But his right eye is still blue, not gold. Rhys wants to think that means something, but he doesn’t know what.

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

Without another word, Jack stands, grabs his jacket from the back of the couch, and sweeps out of the room like an ill omen, leaving Rhys on the ground in his wake.

Rhys’s skin feels cold at the loss of contact. He lies there for a long moment, then forces himself to stand up. He finishes his dinner but leaves Jack’s plate untouched on the counter. And then he goes back to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> google docs ate all my beta's notes so if this is a bit messy that's because it was just me looking at my own grammar
> 
> this chapter is kind of all over the place. please enjoy.

Living with Jack is surprisingly quiet. When he is home, he’s just as volatile and capricious as Rhys might have expected after admiring him for so long from afar, but for some reason, Jack is seldom home. At first Rhys thinks he must be working on a major project, but as the weeks go on, he realizes that must not be true. Jack has to sleep at some point, but it’s obvious he’s not doing it in his own apartment.

Jack does make it a habit of showing his face most days, though, either to bring Rhys food or, of all things, cook for him again. And Jack is a pretty good cook. The meals he prepares are relatively simple, but still more effort than Rhys was ever willing or able to put into feeding himself when he was on his own. Jack even bakes a loaf of bread, just for Rhys to make sandwiches with while he’s gone throughout the day.

But Jack doesn’t really  _ talk _ to Rhys. At first, Rhys feels weird to even expect that kind of attention from Handsome Jack, but after some thought Rhys feels like he’s owed some kind of explanation for his situation. Any attempt to get one is quickly deflected, however. Jack will talk about a a funny ECHOvid he watched or stupid things he saw people do throughout the day, but he won’t talk about anything substantial. It’s impersonal and feels more like inane watercooler talk than anything else.

It’s been nearly three weeks since Jack locked Rhys away in his tower like the greedy dragon he is. The comparison is amusing until Rhys realizes he’s the princess in this scenario, at which point it becomes as infuriating as his predicament. The downtime had been nice for a day or two, despite the whole being someone’s captive thing, but Rhys has gone years with a constant list of things to do and now that he has nothing, he is bored out of his skull.

  
  


So he sleeps a lot. He has nothing better to do, really. Jack still hasn’t given him his arm back and he still can’t connect to the network, even just to let Vaughn know he’s alive. Jack has a dozen gaming systems but Rhys can’t make use of them with only one arm so he can’t even play games to pass the time. The only thing that marks the passage of time for him are Jack’s visits and the cycle of mindless TV shows he watches waiting for Jack to come back. He wonders if this is how housepets feel.

Rhys doesn’t want to be a pet.

Sometimes he finds himself sitting alone for hours, staring out the huge windows at Elpis’s golden glow. He traces the moon’s strange circular markings with his eyes. Watches the light pour out of the scar where Dahl tried to drill through to its core.

Rhys is pretty sure he’s going crazy.

He’s not sure how long he sits and stares at the moon. He’s not even entirely sure how long it’s been since he saw Jack. Rhys eats his food and wears his clothes, but Jack gives him very little of his attention. He’s a busy man, has a company to run. He can’t be expected to spend all his time entertaining the guy he’s keeping hostage.

Rhys finally breaks eye contact with Elpis and turns to face the wall opposite the window where a ridiculous mural has been painted of the man himself, mounted on some sort of unicorn made of diamonds. The unicorn is rearing majestically as Jack hoists a flag in the Hyperion colors. His expression is uncharacteristically regal as he smiles at the viewer.

Slowly, as if sudden movement could startle the Jack in the mural, Rhys reaches over the arm of the couch and takes the lamp on the side table in hand. It’s surprisingly heavy as Rhys stands with it, but light enough to throw across the room at the offending mural. It shatters satisfactorily against the wall in a small explosion of glass and metal. But the satisfaction is short lived.

So Rhys grabs the side table as well. It’s solid in the way that expensive furniture tends to be, but he manages to get a good grip on it and by spinning in place a few times he’s able to hurl it across the room as well, although it doesn’t get as far as the lamp did.

Breathing heavily, Rhys surveys the room for other things he can destroy.

He’s almost meticulous about it. Rhys can’t lift the coffee table on his own but he sweeps the few things on it onto the floor. The gaming consoles and TV screen are easy enough to smash and make a pleasant amount of debris. He fetches a knife from the kitchen and guts first all the throw pillows on the couch, holding them in place with his knee as he stabs down and pictures Jack, then the couch cushions as well. He pulls the stuffing out of them and flings the fluffy innards everywhere like confetti.

He works up quite a sweat while he’s at it. Rhys wants to scream so he does, he screams and curses at Jack who is keeping him locked up alone and bored and  _ isn’t even there _ , he  _ left  _ Rhys here alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to, not even himself.

Rhys drops the knife in the carcass of the couch and crosses to the bedroom, but in his furious path of destruction he forgot about his first victim. The lamp gets him back, though, when he steps in its shattered remains. He screams again, this time in pain as well as anger, yanking his ruined sock off then hopping on one foot into the next room, dripping blood all over the floor behind him.

He spends his time destroying the bedroom hopping around like an idiot and mad about it. He rips all the bedding off the bed and throws it to the ground so he can bleed all over that too. The bedroom is even more barren than the living room and he left the knife behind, but Rhys makes due, flinging the lamp on the bedside table at the giant panoramic view of the moon outside. Elpis doesn’t react, of course, but it does feel like it’s judging him for his hysterical tantrum. 

Ignoring it as best he can, Rhys starts on the table itself. The top drawer holds a box of condoms which he throws across the room with an ugly laugh, but the rest of the drawers are empty so he climbs across the bed to the table on the other side. This lamp he just pushes to the ground before opening the top drawer of the table.

The only thing inside is a picture frame, face down in the drawer.

Rhys picks it up.

The picture is of a little girl, smiling up at the camera. Beaming. She has dark hair pulled back into pigtails and her eyes are vibrantly blue and sparkling with happiness. Her joy has put roses in her cheeks. She’s adorable. 

Rhys has no idea who she is, but from the placement of her picture he knows she must have been important to Jack. And he hides her even in his own home. Or, Rhys thinks as he considers where he found the picture, maybe he’s hiding from her.

Carefully, Rhys puts her on the bedside table and lets her face the room. Now that the rage has been shocked out of him he has nothing left to fuel his rampage, so he lies down on the bed facing the picture of the girl. Who could she be? Rhys was diligent in his Jack fanboyism but in all his years of distant admiration he’s never seen even a hint of who she could be.

Drained as he is from his emotional outburst, it doesn’t take long before Rhys falls asleep in the wreckage.

\---

Rhys wakes with a start with the knowledge that someone just called his name. He stills immediately, eyes open wide in the dark like a child waiting for a monster to show itself, even though he has no blankets to hide under when it does. His back is to the door, but he hears it hiss open quietly. He tries to remain slack and relaxed, like he really is asleep, but the pretense is short-lived because someone grabs him by his shoulder and flips him roughly onto his back.

He struggles at first but stills when he sees Jack, face set in a pale frigid anger that Rhys has never seen on him before. When Rhys has witnessed it through ECHO vids or over the intercoms Jack’s anger seemed hot, explosive, with Jack reveling in the violence of it. But now, his anger is contained. Tense. He presses Rhys down hard into the bed by his sternum with one hand, jumping onto the bed so he can straddle Rhys and loom over him like some kind of beast of prey. Rhys’s breath catches, but whether it's from Jack’s sudden nearness or from the inability to take a full breath he isn’t sure. 

“What the fuck,” even Jack’s voice is cold, subarctic, but also dangerously quiet, “were you doing, Rhys?”

Rhys opens his mouth to respond, but Jack presses down harder, expelling all his air in a wordless grunt.

“I come home and the place is a wreck. There is blood-” Jack sucks in a breath, betraying himself. Is Handsome Jack actually distraught? “There is blood all over the floor. I thought something had happened to you.”

As if in opposition to Jack’s frigid anger, Rhys feels his ire rise fast and hot like a flame given accelerant. Rhys laughs, and it’s a little mean and a lot hysterical.

“Oh,  _ fuck you, _ Jack! You thought something happened to me?  _ You _ happened to me.” Rhys distantly realizes he’s yelling but he can’t seem to stop himself. “Why am I here? You’re keeping me locked in your fucking penthouse after biting me like some kinda weirdo and then you just ignore me? What do you want with me?!”

Jack chokes on his ugly laugh. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, cupcake.”

Rhys bucks under Jack’s hold, kicking futilely and clawing at Jack’s wrist, but Jack has him pinned down effortlessly with just one hand. Jack uses his free hand to snatch Rhys arm and pin it down by the wrist above Rhys’ head. Enraged by his helplessness, Rhys screams incoherently before he finds his words again.

“Of course I don’t know what I’m talking about! I have been locked in here! For weeks! Without anyone to talk to! Not even you! Even when you’re here you treat me like furniture, like a pet.” He sucks in a breath, exhausted from struggling and just the whole situation in general. “Is that what I am to you, Jack? A pet? Am I living in your penthouse like it’s some sort of cage just so you can keep me like an animal? You can’t do that to a person.

“I knew you were cruel but I didn’t think you were this kind of cruel.”

Jack’s expresion ruptures, his anger cracking open like a glacier. The lines of his face become hard and strange beneath the mask, and his eye… It turns gold again, like the first time they met. His lips peel back from his teeth, which are definitely sharper now than they were just a few minutes ago.

“What did you say?” His voice sounds distorted, too, an animal growl underneath his human words.

“You can’t treat me like this, Jack. You can’t keep me locked up like this. I’m going insane.”

“I am  _ keeping  _ you _ safe _ !” Jack snarls, but he’s letting up on the pressure keeping Rhys pinned to the bed. Anguish crosses his expression before he intercepts and kills it ruthlessly.

Sensing weakness, although he couldn’t even begin to guess its origin, Rhys pursues. “From what? The most dangerous thing to have ever happened to me was you.”

Jack’s hand goes lax around his wrist and Rhys doesn’t waste a moment. He wrenches free and grabs the front of Jack’s shirt, rearing up as far and as fast as he can while he yanks Jack down into a headbutt. Jack jerks back in surprise, hands flying to his face as blood immediately begins to flow from both nostrils.

“Ow, fuck!”

This time, when Rhys bucks again Jack is off balance enough that Rhys can throw him off, and he flops gracelessly to the side with a curse. Rhys squirms out from under like a baby stalker, wishing he could also go invisible, and crawls off the bed, intending to make a run for it even though he knows he has nowhere to go. 

Unfortunately, his first step is enough to destroy his plans. He forgot about the glass still embedded in the ball of his foot, and when he puts his weight on it, it's enough to make him crumple to the ground with a shriek of pain.

Jack, who was on his heels immediately when he realized Rhys was slipping away, trips over him and joins him on the floor with an undignified grunt.

They both lie there for what is probably only half a second but feels much longer before Jack starts to turn over. Before he can sit up and regain some kind of control of the situation, Rhys claws his way up the other man’s body so he can reverse their positions from earlier, only this time Rhys is the one on top.

“Woah, alright there, kitten.” Instead of being alarmed Jack just looks smug, pupils wide and dark as his smirks up at Rhys like he’s just won a prize.

_ Let’s see how he likes it, then,  _ Rhys thinks, baring his teeth in a snarl. He’s not sure why he does it, what instinct compels him, but Rhys yanks Jack’s shirt-sweater combination to the side and bites down as hard as he can on the crook of Jack’s shoulder.

Something pops in Rhys’ head. For a moment, he worries he’s had an aneurysm or some kind of malfunction with his cybernetics, but then his body floods with endorphins and he’s suddenly sent floating, unmoored with sensation. He feels relieved, like he finally closed a loop in some difficult code, and he drops on top of Jack like his strings have been cut and lies there, drifting in a soft haze as something reconfigures in his brain.

It takes him several long moments before he comes back to himself. When he does, he finds he’s still lying bonelessly across his captor, face mashed against his clavicle, and Jack is petting up and down his spine with one huge, warm hand. The hair on top of Rhys’s head stirs with every breath Jack takes, the gentle rise and fall of his breathing rocking Rhys like he imagines an ocean might rock a boat. 

“What the fuck,” Rhys slurs. He can taste Jack’s blood in his mouth, coppery and bitter yet kind of appealing.

Jack’s hand doesn’t still on his back. “Jeez, what is it with you and passing out?” Pressed this close, his voice resonates up into Rhys’s chest pleasantly.

“Shut up,” is Rhys’s brilliant rejoinder.

Jack pats him between the shoulderblades. “You okay there, kiddo?” Rhys can’t even see his face but he can still tell Jack is smug. Maybe it’s his default setting.

“Yeah,” Rhys sighs. Then, “No, I’m not okay, what the fuck was that? I feel all… weird.”

This time Jack’s hand does still on Rhys’s back. “Let me look at your foot,” he says instead of answering.

Abruptly, Rhys is wrenched from his mellow cloud. His arm had been lying limply above Jack’s head, so when it looks like Jack might try to leave him in the dark still, Rhys grabs on to the closest part of Jack he can. This happens to be his hair, which he gives a solid pull.

Jack tenses under him before slowly and pointedly uncoiling. Sounding winded, he says, “You better not be starting anything you aren’t prepared to finish there, Rhysie.”

“Don’t avoid my question, asshole.” He can’t sit up and hold on to Jack at the same time but Rhys punctuates this demand by pulling Jack’s hair again.

Jack flips them so fast Rhys doesn’t know it’s happening until he’s on his back again under the other man, arm pinned down once again above his head. The marble under his back has absorbed some of Jack’s warmth but it’s still too cold for comfort, making the body on top of him feel all the more hot. Jack’s legs now being tangled with his own don’t help the situation for Rhys, forcing him to remember that he’s had a distinct crush on this man for years.

Then to make matters worse, Jack presses his mouth to the now healed bite scar on Rhys’s shoulder and bites down again, just enough pressure for Rhys to feel the teeth.

Rhys’s mind unspools. He thinks he makes an embarrassing sound, a gasp or, god help him, a moan, but he can’t be sure because all his awareness is now taken up by Jack’s nearness, how his teeth press into the scar he made.

“You done?” Jack’s lips tickle Rhys’s neck when he speaks. Rhys shivers involuntarily.

“No. You have to tell me what’s going on.”

Jack sits up far enough to look Rhys in the eye. His eyes are back to their usual mismatched blue and green, no gold to be had. Rhys holds his gaze petulantly.

“I will, I will. But first, let me look at your foot.”

With that, Jack stands and scoops Rhys up off the floor with barely a grunt of effort, making Rhys throw his arm around his shoulders and cling to him even though he was pretty sure Jack wouldn’t drop him. Rhys is also trying pretty hard not to be charmed by Jack carrying him like he’s something delicate, something worth preserving. It’s not mixing well with the frustration he’s trying to maintain with the other man.

Jack carries him into the bathroom and deposits Rhys carefully on the edge of the truly magnificent and spacious bathtub, large enough that Rhys was able to stretch out fully with yet more room to spare when he bothered to use it. Then Jack rummages around under one of the two sinks for a moment before returning with a first aid kit. He sits on the floor at Rhys’s feet with a little  _ oomph _ before opening the kit and removing a pair of tweezers.

“Gimme.” Jack makes a grabbing motion with his empty left hand. Rhys stares down at him for a long, giddy moment.  _ Handsome Jack, right there at his feet.  _ He shoves his bloody foot in Jack’s face before he can think about too much more.

But then to make matters worse, Jack conjures some simple wire framed glasses from somewhere. He puts them on, looking up at Rhys as though challenging him to say anything about them.

Rhys doesn’t, because Rhys can’t speak. The glasses are the final nail in the coffin of his dignity. He feels himself flushing as he meets Jack’s eyes. He may have been in Jack’s proximity way more than he ever could have dreamed of in his life, but this is the first time since the day they first met that Jack looks at him like he’s actually paying attention, and now this whole situation on top of their earlier wrestling match is making him feel some kind of way.

Jack watches him like what he’s feeling is plain on his face. And smirks. Rhys probably flushes even redder, if how hot his face feels is any indication, and wishes he  _ had _ kicked him in the face.

Appearing triumphant, Jack wraps one large hand solidly around Rhy’s ankle and holds his foot in place while he goes to work pulling the glass free. He operates with the surety of a man that builds things with his hands, gentle yet methodical, carefully extracting the shards and dropping the bloody mess of them on a napkin he’s left on the floor for just this purpose.

It hurts. Rhys wants to look at anything but the man pulling glass out of his foot but he can’t, instead staring down at Jack’s intent face and economical movements while chewing on his tongue to stay quiet and doing his best not to squirm. Jack is doing a solid job of holding him still, though. Rhys will probably have a bit of a bruise later. Not that he’ll mind much.

“You ever heard of werewolves, Rhysie?” Jack asks out of nowhere.

“Wolves aren’t real. They’re myths.” Rhys scoffs, eager to have something to distract him from the pain even if it’s a conversation about some mythological creature.

Jack snorts derisively. “No, not- Ugh. Not wolves,  _ werewolves _ . They-” This time Jack stops to actually look up at Rhys. “Wait, what do you mean wolves aren’t real?”

“Yeah, they’re just something parents made up to get their kids to behave. You know, ‘Clean your room or the wolves will come out of the walls and eat all your stuff and then you!’ That kind of thing.”

“What. Where did you grow up again? Persephone? Wolves were real, they’re just, like, extinct now. And they lived in the forests, not people’s houses.”

“Did you read my file?”

Jack gives him an unimpressed look over the top of his glasses, making it clear just how stupid he thinks that question is. “Hold still, I’m almost done.”

He drops the tweezers and applies antiseptic to a little cotton ball, then begins dabbing it on Rhys’s foot. The sting of the antiseptic hurts worse than getting the glass out had, but when Rhys tries to twitch away Jack’s grip just tightens on his ankle, holding him in place.

Ignoring the little swoop his stomach gives at Jack’s casual use of strength, Rhys asks, “So what are werewolves then?” His voice comes out more breathless than he would have preferred. 

Considering, Jack sucks his teeth obnoxiously while he dabs at Rhys’s foot. After a moment of thought, he says, “From what I’ve figured out, the mathematical pattern of the phases of the moon of some long dead planet are reflected in a werewolf’s genetic code, causing them to change into wolves when the moon appears ‘full’, meaning the planet isn’t between its sun and its moon to cast a shadow on it. This appears to be genetic; there are physiological differences between a human and a werewolf as well, although it’s impossible to discern one from a normal human just from sight alone, but werewolves do have senses heightened beyond your typical human.” Jack pauses to take in Rhys’s expression judgmentally. “You catch all that, pumpkin? Am I going to fast for you?”

“Ah,” Rhys replies, dumbfounded and a little annoyed at being spoken down to. “So does that make you, like, some kind of furry?”

“What? No, this was  _ years _ of research-” Jack interrupts himself to stab the cotton ball towards Rhys in accusation. “Wait, how do you know what a furry is but not a werewolf?”

Rhys suppresses his smirk and tries to make his voice as innocent as he possibly can. “So you’re not denying you’re a furry?”

Judging by Jack’s expression, he wasn’t very successful. With a positively venomous glare, he begins to wrap Rhys’s foot in gauze, still surprisingly gentle.

Satisfied that Jack is now just as irritated as he is, Rhys steers the conversation back where he wants it to be. “Alright. You’re a werewolf. Is that why you bit me?”

“Probably.” Jack rises and begins to put his first aid kit away.

“‘Probably’? Do you not know?”

Jack manages to slam the cabinet closed behind the first aid kit despite it having one of those anti-slam mechanisms. Rhys jumps, remembering this is a man he probably shouldn’t actively try to piss off so much. Turning to loom over Rhys where he’s still seated on the edge of the tub, Jack smiles sharply at him, imbuing the expression with predatory menace.

“I bit you because I wanted to, cupcake.” Leaning over him but not quite touching, Jack breathes in deep next to Rhys’s ear, smelling him. “I did it ‘cause you’re mine.”

Rhys shivers in fear and delight. Instinctually, he bares his neck to Jack and with a quietly pleased noise the other man immediately takes advantage, burying his nose in the crook of Rhys’s shoulder and breathing him in. A satisfied kind of stillness settles into Rhys, quiet and warm and comfortable. He doesn’t let himself think about why Jack is having this affect on him, about how he should maybe be freaked out by it. Instead, Rhys wraps his arm around the other man’s shoulders like he can hold him in place.

With very little display of effort, Jack tucks his hands under Rhys’s thighs and picks him up, moving him from the edge of the tub to the counter between the two sinks, giving Rhys a height advantage yet again. When he has Rhys situated where he no longer has to stoop, he goes to work delicately nibbling bruises above Rhys’s collarbones. Rhys tilts his head further to give him more room, running his hand up the back of Jack’s neck and into his hair, not pulling this time but almost petting.

Humming in contentment, Jack rucks Rhys’s shirt up and strokes his hands up his sides with self-assured firmness, mapping new territory he already knows belongs to him. Once again, Rhys feels like he should be angry or concerned about the presumption but it feels so right, so correct, that he can only hum back in satisfaction, warm sticky heat pooling in his belly.

Jack is thorough in his exploration, wandering his hands over every bit of skin he can reach without taking Rhys’s shirt off, traveling his fingertips up the ridge of Rhys’s spine, down the valley of his lower back, over the arch of his ribs. He thumbs one of Rhys’s nipples and chuckles when Rhys gasps at the shock of sensation.

With one hand, Jack pets down Rhys’s belly, leaving the other at his chest. When his fingers reach the waistband of Rhys’s sleep pants he stops. Rhys whines. He’s not sure how they went from fighting to heavy petting in such a short amount of time, but he is into it.

Pausing his assault on Rhys’s neck, Jack asks simply, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Rhys replies on another whine, kneading Jack’s scalp like a cat.

“I gotta say, Rhysie,” Jack murmurs as he delves into Rhys’s pants and takes him in hand, “It’s been hell having you here, smelling so good and like you’re mine, and not touching you.”

“Is that why you haven’t been sticking around?” Rhys gasps as Jack twists his wrist and thumbs his nipple at the same time.

“One reason. Also been busy, you know, running a company. If I take my eyes off any of these idiots for a minute, they screw something up. Some peon even embezzled ten million dollars from me. And he hasn’t even done anything interesting with it yet!” Jack quickens his pace when Rhys gasps again. “Like, if he did something funny with it I  _ might _ kill him quickly. Or I might not. Depends on how I’m feeling that day, really.”

Rhys can’t even form a reply, just make punched out little noises as Jack works him. He’s graduated to hair-pulling once again, short little tugs that Jack doesn’t seem to mind at all, judging by the way his pupils widen as he watches Rhys’s expression. Rhys tries his best to watch Jack back, but the closer he gets to completion the harder it becomes to keep his eyes open. He gives up quickly, face going slack with his impending orgasm.

“Sometimes a guy has to make his own fun.” Jack says matter-of-factly, then he leans back into Rhys and scrapes his teeth across the bite scar.

Rhys comes apart with a yell, his climax slamming into him at the sudden overwhelming sensation on the mark, lighting him up like fireworks under his skin. He claws at Jack’s shoulder as he strokes Rhys through it, gasping and whining pitifully. Jack tortures him for a long, ruthless moment, relenting only when Rhys starts trying to squirm away in earnest from the over stimulation. After, Jack allows him a moment to rest, Rhys still clutching his shoulder so he can’t go too far away.

When he’s able to pry his eyes open again, he’s greeted with the sight of Jack watching him fervently. Smirking, catlike, the CEO of Hyperion raises his messy hand to his mouth and licks it clean. The pink of his tongue is lurid against his skin.

Even though it was freely given, Rhys feels like he lost something here. His dignity, as usual, but something else too. His last emotional foothold against Jack, maybe, washed away like sand under the inexorable tide of Jack’s magnetism.

Like every other time over the past few weeks that Rhys has second guessed his reaction to Jack, he lets it go before he can think about it too deeply.

“You hungry? I’m hungry. C’mon, I’ll grill us some cheese.” Jack is all cheerful energy now, still standing in Rhys’s space with a large proprietary hand on his thigh.

Food does sound good. Not allowing himself to be intimidated, Rhys scoots forward to the edge of the counter and slides off. Jack barely steps back, giving Rhys just enough room to get down but making him press his body against his in the process. Their noses nearly brush and once again Rhys is electrified by the proximity, he sways incrementally closer. 

Jack grins at him, wide and self-satisfied like a cat in the cream.

Before Rhys can make further moves to reciprocate the earlier orgasm, Jack steps back fully and heads for the door. His sudden absence leaves Rhys vaguely bereft, but also irked. He huffs in irritation.

“C’mon, kiddo, get a move on. Do you need me to pick you up and put you on my hip like a toddler?” Jack calls from the doorway. But he also waits for Rhys to reply.

Rhys debates making Jack carry him just to be annoying, but he doesn’t think he can handle yet another indignity on top of everything else that’s happened today.

When he follows Jack back into the bedroom, everything is back in its place. Even the lamps are back. For just a second, Rhys wonders if he really trashed the place or if that was actually a dream. He doesn’t remember if it was still a mess before they went into the bathroom.

“Were people out here cleaning while we were having sex?” Rhys does not shriek.

“Sex?” Jack gives him a sleazy grin. “That was just a handjob, pumpkin.”

“Oh my god, would you- Would you stop being difficult for more than five minutes?”

Jack cackles. “No, it wasn’t ‘people’, it was just the cleaning bots. Don’t worry, princess, you honor is still safe.”

Maybe ignoring Jack might be the best way to go. Like he’s a school yard bully pulling pigtails. Rhys hobbles past him with all the dignity he can muster. Instead of following, Jack of course skirts his way around Rhys so he can lead the way to the kitchen. He matches his pace to Rhys, but Rhys doesn’t allow himself to actually believe it’s for his benefit. Jack would love a chance to laugh at him if he fell.

In the kitchen, Jack makes them both a grilled cheese. It’s way fancier than anything Rhys would have made himself, containing three kinds of cheese that Jack actually grated himself instead of those orange rubbery squares that live in Rhys’s fridge back home. Once again, Jack stands on the other side of the counter to eat, like he can’t stand the thought of resting.

They chew in something approaching companionable silence, Rhys reviewing the events of the day and wondering what the hell is wrong with himself, Jack thinking who knows what.

Abruptly, Rhys remembers something the other man said in passing and almost bites his tongue chewing his sandwich. 

“The person you said stole ten million from Hyperion, that wasn’t Hugo Vasquez was it?”

That gets Jack’s attention, his eyes suddenly laser-focused on Rhys. The man’s attention can really be overwhelming sometimes, like the spotlight in an interrogation room compelling you to spill your guts. 

Jack sets down his sandwich. “That’s right, you two were in the same department, weren’t you. I saw you outside his office.”

For some reason, Rhys feels flustered. He clears his throat before he replies. “You did. We were competing for the same promotion, but Vasquez spaced Henderson when he figured out I was closing in. I may have overheard a conversation while I was in his office, though. He said something about buying a vault key.”

Jack’s expression doesn’t change, but Rhys’s ECHOeye catches a minute twitch of his right hand, the squelched impulse to make a fist. 

“And I may have hacked into his terminal as well, so I have the location where he was planning to meet up with his contact on Pandora to make the purchase.” Rhys realizes he’s fiddling with his napkin and makes himself stop, putting it down beside his plate.

“Why are you only telling me this now, Rhysie?” There’s that intense stare again, a predator restrained. Something ugly boils behind his gaze and Rhys’s eyes skitter away, unable to maintain eye contact.

“To be fair, I thought you were chasing me down to kill me over it. I couldn’t think of any other reason to have caught your attention.” Rhys doesn’t whine. “And then I was kind of preoccupied with the whole being a captive thing.”

“Rhys. Are you telling me you could have shared this information with me weeks ago? That because you didn’t, a vault key could be lost in the wind?” Jack grits through clenched teeth. “Or worse, it might have greasy little fingerprints on it from that shithead Vasquez?”

Rhys licks his lips nervously. “It’s not like you’ve been around much for me to tell you anyway,  _ Jack _ .” God, he sounds like an angry housewife or something. He doesn’t like it. “And you didn’t exactly give me a way to contact you.”

“I am here  _ every day- _ ” Jack begins with a snarl, but Rhys cuts him off.

“Yeah! You are!” Rhys snaps, slapping his hand on the counter in front of him. “You make sure I’m fed and that I have water, you’re a really good pet owner, Jack. But let me make it clear to you: I am not your pet. You are keeping me here against my will. You like to show off and you like to- I don’t know what you’re doing, providing? Is that a werewolf thing? I would probably be really into it, except you’re not treating me like a person, asshole. Why would I tell you anything?” 

Rhys is surprised he isn’t screaming again by the end of his tirade. He wants to be screaming, has wanted to scream for days, but all his words come out at almost a normal volume. Like most things in his life recently, he isn’t sure how he feels about that either.

And now Jack looks angry  _ and _ confused, like a dog who’s just been swatted on the nose. He stares at Rhys, working his jaw like he wants to shout something back but he doesn’t know what it is. Rhys stares back mutinously.

After a long moment, Jack’s eyes turn from angry to pensive. He seems to wilt, curling into himself not physically, but emotionally, like he’s remembering something he would much rather forget.

“Ah,” Rhys realizes. “ _ You _ don’t even know why I’m here, do you?”

Consternation overtakes Jack’s expression. Rhys chokes on a laugh, both incredulous and infuriated with just how ridiculous this whole situation is. Jack is a  _ werewolf _ , because that’s a thing somehow, and he’s kidnapped Rhys and kept him in his own personal quarters for weeks without even knowing the reason why. The entire scenario sounds like a very specific fantasy, so ludicrous that not even Rhys could have dreamed it up and he’s dreamed up plenty fantasies when it comes to Handsome Jack. 

In the moment it takes Rhys to get himself back under control Jack stows away any sign of vulnerability, tucking it away to reclaim his usual arrogance. He smirks at Rhys, tilting his head to its customary condescending angle, his mismatched eyes narrow and mean.

Rhys is taller than Jack at the moment, sitting as he is on one of the tall stools at the bar, but he doesn’t feel it when Jack leans across the counter at him. His presence bears down on Rhys oppressively, boiling upwards like a stormcloud on the horizon, and Rhys does everything he can not to let himself shrink back. The spark of vicious satisfaction in Jack’s smile tells him he wasn’t entirely successful.

“You forget, kiddo.” Jack says with too much teeth, incisors flashing sharp in the bright light of the kitchen. “This is my station. I don’t need a reason.” There’s something behind Jack’s eyes, tightly leashed. Something like rage or maybe terror, fighting to rise to the surface.

“You’re mine.” Rhys can hear the period at the end Jack’s words, a mark of finality, a declaration of inescapable fact. It makes him want to tilt his head back, to give his neck to Jack, anything to soothe the calamitous emotion Rhys senses coming from him. But he doesn’t, and they stare at each other across the bar for an unbearably long time, the seconds stretched to their breaking points. Rhys tries to find the words that will make Jack understand that he is wrong, that he may have signed a contract with Hyperion but that didn’t mean he wasn’t his own person, that he just can’t live like this, but under the withering heat of Jack’s eyes they burn to ashes in his mouth.

Before Rhys can push past his sudden speechlessness, Jack is gone, escaping without another word and leaving Rhys no room to argue with him. The door closes quietly on its gentle mechanism, the locks engaging loudly and immediately afterwards. Rhys stares at the door like he can see through it if he just tries hard enough. He pictures Jack immoble on the other side, seized with confusion just as Rhys is now.

“Coward.” Rhys says to the empty apartment. Whether he’s talking about Jack or himself, he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t bother to pick up after their lunch, instead crossing the once again spotless apartment to the bedroom. He curls up on the unreasonably spacious bed, wrapping the blankets around him in a tight little cocoon of self comfort. The bed hasn’t smelled like Jack for more than a week, and despite himself Rhys feels the loss of it keenly. He angles himself where he can’t see the moon, but it's luminescence still laps at the shadows, easing them away from total dark.

Eyes tracing the edges of light, Rhys thinks.

The werewolf thing is low on his list of things to worry about, but... Rhys wonders if it has something to do with Jack’s behavior. Jack has always been capricious, but his instinct was always to destroy. There are ECHOsites devoted entirely to Jack’s social life, and although he makes the appearance of a glamorous lifestyle there has been no evidence that he has even something like friendships with other people. He’s never seen with the same person on his arm twice.

Rhys doesn’t know what about him compels Jack to keep him around, to let him live even when Rhys is pissing him off. Even when something about Rhys scares him.

But it’s something Rhys can use to his own advantage.

Rhys knows he should want to escape, but he finds a different kind of compulsion forming. If he can hook his own claws into Jack, there’s no way he’s ever letting go.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big thanks to basia for the beta and the fashion advice

Rhys wakes with a start.

There is a human-shaped shadow in the room with him. The windows automatically darken in the evenings to simulate a planetside night cycle, obscuring Elpis but not completely blocking out her glow. The shadow stands between Rhys and the window, featureless except for the animal shine of its eyes as they catch the light from the bedroom door cracked open on the other side of the room. Rhys stares at those pin-points of light for a long, stretched out nightmare moment before he speaks.

“Were you watching me sleep?” he rasps, hoarse from sleep. 

“What? No,” comes Jack’s voice from the creepy shadow person. “Get up, it’s take-Rhysie-to-work-day.”

Rhys jackknifes up from his prone position, blankets pooling around him as he struggles to free himself from his cocoon. “Really?” he croaks, but Jack is already gone. Wrenching himself from the grasp of the warm bed, Rhys stumbles after him.

It’s only after his feet hit the floor that Rhys remembers his injury from the day before. He expects pain to take the legs out from under him like a cartoon who’s just realized they’ve stepped off a cliff, but it never comes. There’s only a vague discomfort, the feeling of an old bruise mostly healed. Whatever Jack did to his foot must have been really effective. Nevertheless, Rhys still walks gingerly as he follows.

Jack is already slamming around in the kitchen when Rhys catches up, eggs and bacon on the counter while he digs through the cabinets in search of something. The smell of brewing coffee fills the room and Rhys sucks it into his lungs greedily. The bright lights of the kitchen are jarring after the calm dark of the bedroom, so Rhys has to squint while his eyes adjust.

Thrusting a newly acquired spatula at Rhys victoriously, Jack pins him with an imperious stare. “You’re not coming with me looking like that. Go take a shower, dum-dum, you look like you’ve been trampled by a rakk hive and now the rakks live in your hair.”

Rhys ignores the insult. “You’re letting me out of the apartment?” 

Jack drops a slice of bacon on the already-hot pan definitively. The bacon hisses like it’s laughing at Rhys’s expense. “Not looking like that I’m not. Do you  _ sleep with socks on? _ ” 

“My feet get cold,” is Rhys’s defensive reply. “And stop changing the subject; you’re taking me to the office with you?”

“Yeah, I said I would.” Smirking, Jack gives him an appreciative once-over. “Aw, wait, are you wearing my clothes to sleep in? That’s real cute, pumpkin.”

Looking down, Rhys takes himself in with a grimace. He’s wearing a yellow Hyperion T-shirt at least two sizes too big for him, boxers which are also too big for him and have to be hiked up frequently, and boring black socks, all pilfered from Jack’s closet. At least the shirt is long enough to hide anything the slipping boxers might reveal.

“I don’t exactly have access to my closet up here, Jack,” Rhys gripes as he makes his way into the kitchen, ignoring Jack’s wary stare to retrieve a mug and fill it with blessed nectar of the gods. Jack always has really good coffee on hand and never seems to run out. Today’s is one he hasn’t tried before, with just a hint of chocolate to it. Rhys drinks it black, enjoying its complex flavor and the way it scalds his tongue. “When did you say anything about me going to the office with you?”

Jack’s eyes are lingering on Rhys’s shoulder and the mark he left there, exposed by the wide collar of his oversized shirt. Rhys doesn’t allow his satisfaction to show at the display of interest, taking another sip of his coffee instead to hide his smug smile. 

“Uh, like five minutes ago? Keep up, kiddo,” Jack answers distractedly. 

“Can we stop by my apartment so I can get something decent to wear first?”

Jack grins at him, eyes sharp with mischief. “I’ll do you one better, Rhysie. Now go take a shower.”

Sick of trying to talk to Jack, Rhys just rolls his eyes and begrudgingly takes his coffee with him to the bathroom. He’s come to learn that when Jack gets like this, it’s better to just go along with it if he wants to get anywhere. Jack will continue to dodge questions until Rhys either does what he wants or gets so frustrated he forgets what he asked in the first place. Either way, he knows Jack considers it a victory.

Jack’s shower is huge and self indulgent, with a dozen showerheads to simulate rainfall. Rhys has spent many an hour under them, using the hot water to stave off the touch starvation that had been creeping in on him since his captivity began. There’s no waiting for hot water in Jack’s apartment; it always comes immediately when called, filling the air with steam.

Rhys finishes his coffee and discards Jack’s clothes on the floor next to the sinks. The shower is just as welcoming as always, but gives Rhys too much time with his own thoughts and lets the anxiety start to creep in. He’s pretty sure Jack won’t kill him at this point, but he still doesn’t know what Jack actually wants with him. And he’s still kind of waiting for some sort of repercussion for waiting so long to tell him about Vasquez’s vault key scheme.

Also, what does Jack have planned for him with his clothes? He’d seemed so giddy and smug when he mentioned it. God, he hopes Jack isn’t planning to take him shopping. Rhys isn’t sure he can survive some kind of shopping montage with Handsome Jack at the helm. Rhys has admired the man for years, but never for his fashion sense.

When Rhys steps out of the shower he finds the clothes he had left discarded on the floor are now conspicuously absent. Even though Jack had already seen him mostly naked the day he was kidnapped (and had his hand down his pants just the night before), Rhys wraps a towel around his waist for the sake of modesty. It isn’t an easy task with one arm, he ends up having to use his hip to hold one end in place against the counter while he tucks the other under so the towel will stay. His virtue preserved, Rhys dries and styles his hair as well as he can with one hand. The fact that one bottle of any of Jack’s hair products would probably be more expensive than what Rhys makes in a month doesn’t really make the process easier, but it certainly doesn’t hurt either. Then it’s just a matter of brushing his teeth and he can finally pretend he’s ready to face what Jack has planned.

It’s only as he’s standing there staring at himself in the mirror with what was once Jack’s toothbrush in his mouth that he realizes he probably should have pushed back harder with Jack in the kitchen. That it didn’t really even occur to him to fight back, and maybe that it should have. Jack is winning too many arguments for Rhys’s peace of mind.

Sighing, Rhys spits toothpaste into the white marble sink then rinses. At least his mouth doesn’t taste like sleep anymore.

Still in his towel, Rhys enters the bedroom so he can raid Jack’s closet again for some fresh clothes. The conundrum of finding something that fits enough he won’t be embarrassed to wear it in public is solved as soon as he opens the door.

Laid out on the dresser where Jack stores all of his expensive watches he never wears is a suit, somewhere between gray and charcoal, with a Hyperion-yellow dress shirt beside it.

It looks fairly middle-of-the-line at first glance, but only then. The shirt is just a touch deeper than standard Hyperion yellow - Rhys would know, he’s been fined for non-standard yellow before - and the cotton is a tight, heavy weave with a subtle striped texture to it. The jacket’s color is deep and with a similar, subtle striping to it; it’s soft and light, not enough to wrinkle, but yes enough to make multiple middle-managers’ bank accounts weep at the mere thought. There’s a flash of contrast stitching visible at the seams, a tiny hint of gold that shows only if Rhys moves the jacket just so in the light, and he’s got no doubts that it’s  _ actual _ 24k gold. How this thing gets laundered, he has no idea.

The pants are the same fabric as the jacket, soft and lined with the same deep charcoal, hemmed with that same gold stitching. Rhys knows just looking at them that they’ll sit just right at his waist, and hit precisely at his ankle, and not 5 inches above. No flashy Hyperion branding anywhere, and that speaks miles for just how flashy this suit actually is.

And on top of it all, a bionic arm, new and top of the line, gleaming chrome with gold accents. It’s a little gaudy but, in all honesty, really cool looking.

It’s not  _ his _ arm, but Rhys puts it on immediately, itching to finally feel a little less vulnerable for the first time in weeks. It engages with his port effortlessly, and the first thing Rhys notices is how much lighter it is than his arm ever was. The tension headaches and shoulder pain had faded in the weeks without it weighing him down, but being down a limb had not made it worth it. This one must be made with much lighter material and feels perfectly balanced to Rhys’s flesh arm.

It only takes a moment for the new arm to install its drivers into his systems. Once the process is complete, he flexes his new hand, marvelling at its instant and beautiful response. He had modified his own arm over the years to fit his preferences and this one has obviously been modelled after it, down to the tension feedback in the joints. Rhys taps his fingertips together in an easy rhythm to test their fine control and finds even the tactile sensors have been not just replicated but improved.

Rhys stands for a long moment in just his towel and new arm and tries to digest this new turn of events. Ever since he woke up in Jack’s bed he hasn’t really allowed himself to think about what’s been happening to him, all of it too strange and ridiculous and terrifying for him to wrap his head around, each new event more ludicrous than the last. And even when he knows what Jack is doing to him isn’t right, is definitely not healthy, Rhys gets dragged in by his magnetism anyway, like Jack is a supermassive black hole and Rhys is an unlucky bit of debris pulled in by his inescapable gravity.

The worst part, and the hardest part for Rhys to understand, is why he’s... okay with it. Vaughn and Yvette had made fun of him for years for his Handsome Jack obsession, but he never  _ really _ thought Jack would give him the time of day, would even spit on him if he was on fire. But now he somehow has Jack’s attention, and it is heady. 

He doesn’t know what he isn’t willing to give up to keep it.

Jack had even bought him underwear, which puts a hot uncomfortable feeling in Rhys’s stomach. Aside from the one pair of underwear he had been wearing when Jack abducted him, he’s been wearing Jack’s boxers. That didn’t feel strange until now, with Rhys staring down at a brand new set of sinfully soft boxer briefs, gold label  _ and _ Hyperion branded.

He feels a little like he’s been gifted lingerie. Swallowing around the nervous, off balance feeling rising in his chest, Rhys gets dressed.

It feels so good to have two hands again. The cybernetic is so wonderfully articulate, just the act of buttoning his shirt is easier, effortless. Rhys doesn’t want to be grateful to Jack for a new arm when he stole the original in the first place, but this is such a huge improvement he has a hard time staying mad about it. And the clothes look really good on him too. He doesn’t let himself think of how Jack got his measurements. 

The last parts of Rhys’s outfit sit on the floor waiting for him, a pair of black boots made of unknown but very fine leather, and some yellow socks. Once fully outfitted, Rhys positions himself in front of the floor length mirror in Jack’s closet and, tugging his cuffs straight, examines himself. 

Rhys expected the yellow would look garish on him, but all together he looks… really damn good. He can’t help but preen a bit, reaching up to neaten his hair into a perfect swept-back coif. A tie had been conspicuously absent from the things left for him, so he leaves the top two buttons undone. The edge of the bite mark on his neck is just barely visible, and for a moment Rhys considers trying to cover it up while in public, but then he remembers how Jack stared and ultimately decides to leave it. Besides, he kinda likes it. 

Rhys’s instinct proves to be good because the bite mark is the first thing Jack’s eyes fix on when he returns to the kitchen. Why he didn’t stare at it so heatedly earlier when it was bared for all to see, Rhys isn’t sure, but now that it’s only slightly visible Jack can’t seem to take his eyes off it. Rhys allows himself to smirk, wanting Jack to know he noticed.

“Lookin’ good, kiddo,” Jack chuckles, amused at Rhys’s smug expression. He stands from where he had been sitting at the bar and casually neatens Rhys’s shirt collar, not being sneaky at all in how he flattens it down to reveal his mark just a bit more. It takes everything Rhys has not to lean into the touch, especially when he hooks a casual arm over Rhys’s shoulders and pulls him to a seat at the bar.

Breakfast is simple enough, an almost companionable silence falling over them both as they eat. Over easy isn’t how Rhys usually prefers his eggs, but he won’t complain; at least he didn’t have to cook. Plus, Jack also made bacon and pancakes and he even has a bottle of maple syrup, something Rhys can never get a hold of on his budget.

Jack always eats fast, like he thinks someone is going to try to steal his food from him if he doesn’t get it in his mouth quick enough, but Rhys takes his time. He’s going to savor this syrup while he has access to it, plus Jack’s cooking is pretty damn good. Also, it’s fun to watch Jack become impatient, fidgeting with his ECHO and grumbling while he waits but apparently unwilling to hurry Rhys through his food.

Eventually, Jack breaks and tries to fill the silence by asking Rhys a question just as he puts his fork in his mouth. “How’s the feet?”

Rhys makes an agreeable noise around his mouthful as he chews hurriedly to be able to answer. Normally when Jack cooks he just talks  _ at  _ Rhys and not with him, so being asked a question is a refreshing change. “Yeah, they were still a little sore but not anything like what I expected. You, uh, did a good job patching me up. Thank you.”

“Eh, no problem, kiddo,” Jack waves a dismissive hand, but something in his smile says he’s pleased by Rhys’s gratitude. “Even if it was your fault your feet were fucked up, wounds like that are a bitch to heal.”

Not wanting to comment on the series of events that led to his injured feet, Rhys shoves another bite of pancake into his mouth and lets Jack talk. All he requires are vague noises to indicate Rhys is listening, and what he’s saying is actually pretty interesting; Jack goes into a long explanation of a topical cream made from the same stuff in healing hypos and how effective it is in accelerating healing and preventing scar tissue. Rhys doesn’t even remember Jack putting anything on his feet, but in his defense it was a busy afternoon.

Eventually, Jack realizes Rhys is done eating and has just been letting him talk about his new product and starts ushering Rhys towards the door. He leaves the dishes piled in the sink, and maybe it’s fair that Rhys cleans up after Jack cooks but he hates leaving things to deal with later. Nevertheless, Jack is herding him towards the door and Rhys is eager to be out of the apartment for the first time in weeks.

It’s strangely pleasant. Rhys wants more mornings like this. Wants more of this Jack, a man that cooks him breakfast and makes him a cool new arm and talks to him while he eats. Every vague crumb of intimacy Jack leaves, every hint of him as a person instead of the force of personality he projects, leaves Rhys wanting more.

He’s just not sure how to survive getting it.

\---

Rhys never would have thought he would miss the commotion of the Hub of Heroism, but the familiar sight and its bustling crowd after so long in isolation is oddly comforting. It helps that the crowd parts like water around Jack, and Rhys by association, so he’s not actually being bumped into like he normally is in the Hub. He sees a lot of faces turn towards the CEO to watch in awe as he passes, and a few even notice Rhys and look at him speculatively.

He thinks he sees Casey from his own department, gaping at him as he passes, and he can’t help but smirk a little at her. Yeah, he’s killing it in this new suit. He lifts his new arm to give her a smug wave, but Jack is grabbing him by the elbow and hustling towards the elevator before he can really start showing off.

“Keep up,” Jack snaps impatiently, but there’s something amused, even appreciative, in the corner of his frown.

The doors open immediately as Jack approaches. “Hello, Handsome,” purrs the sultry but pleasant voice of the elevator’s computer, confirming Jack’s identity with a scan. Rhys snorts, because of course Handsome Jack’s elevator has to have a sexy voice.

Jack is practically buzzing with excitement as they enter his office, which is just as ostentatious and over-the-top as Rhys could have expected. He herds Rhys past the giant busts of himself and up the short set of stairs to a massive desk on top of a platform raised to overlook the rest of the office. Once they’re at the top, Jack turns with a grin and stares at Rhys expectantly.

“Uh, nice… desk,” Rhys guesses. Once upon a time, Rhys would have been faint with giddiness at being in Jack’s office, but since he’s living in the man’s apartment for the last few weeks he’s having trouble accessing that part of himself at the moment. 

Jack rolls his eyes eloquently. “Is that all you have to say? C’mon, kiddo, this is where all the magic happens!”

Staring at Jack, Rhys realizes the other man looking for approval. From him. For what? His poor decorating choices?

Rhys makes himself look around the room with a new, more appraising eye. After a moment, he realizes there are more personal touches here than in Jack’s own apartment. There’s the desk and the ridiculous throne of a chair behind it, of course, but there’s also a wall that holds what looks like trophies and souvenirs from places Rhys has never heard of let alone seen. And behind the desk itself is another giant window, this one one also looking out on Elpis, just like in Jack’s apartment.

“It’s nice, very intimidating,” Rhys assures, caught somewhere between bewildered and amused by Jack’s behavior. He scans the trophy wall for something to ask about, not sure what the relevance is for any of the items displayed. “Where did you get that, uh, sword from?”

Jack perks up at Rhys’s question, eager to brag. “Oh, that? Got it from my first Maliwan assassin! Asshole made it all the way to my office before I killed him. Why he thought he could kill me with a  _ sword _ , well-” Jack laughs obnoxiously, “I shot him from the other side of the room, what a freakin’ moron! You don’t bring a sword to a gunfight. Anyway, I was able to reverse engineer a lot of his cloaking tech and add it to Hyperion’s shield lines. Pretty sure they’re still mad about it, and I think this thing is like a family heirloom or something, they’ve asked for it back a few times.”

“Why don’t you give it back?” Rhys asks, curious.

“Pff, why should I? They’re the ones that let someone take it from them.” Jack responds with vicious good cheer.

And honestly, that says so much about Jack. Well, Rhys thinks with some startling affection, he isn’t CEO of Hyperion for nothing.

“I guess that’s fair,” Rhys agrees, finding his eyes wandering to the window once again. A thought occurs to him. “You said something about werewolves being affected by the moon, right?”

Jack looks up from where he’s still playing idly with his sword. “Yeah, what about it,” he asks, slicing at the air again while maintaining pointed eye contact with Rhys. It’s mildly perturbing.

“Have you ever noticed you have a lot of windows looking out at a moon? Please don’t cut me with that.” Rhys shies away as Jack brandishes the sword at him again playfully.

“Oh, please, I’m not gonna cut you.” He spins the sword deftly in one hand before sheathing it with a flourish. It’s actually kind of impressive. “And I said werewolves were only affected by one moon, not all of them.”

“Sure, but have you ever considered you might be picking these places to spend your time in for a reason. I mean, I spend all day staring at Elpis in your-” Rhys’s relief is short-lived as Jack draws the sword again with a dramatic  _ shhnk _ and menaces towards him with the blade drawn. “Woah, woah, woah, okay, there’s no need to get-”

In his haste to get away, Rhys trips over his own feet and lands on his ass with a yelp, narrowly missing clipping his head on the desk. The way Jack follows him feels like pursuit, full of vicious promise. Rhys thinks about trying to scrabble away but he has the desk behind him and nowhere to run. 

Eyes feral, Jack puts the tip of his sword under Rhys’s chin and uses it to tilt his head back. An unfortunate blush rises hotly on Rhys’s face as he’s forced to bare his neck. He’s not sure how the wires for arousal and fear were so irrevocably crossed for him, but it’s fueled his obsession with Handsome Jack since the first time he saw the infamous CEO’s threatening propaganda vids. Only now, he’s close enough to Jack for the other man to notice.

Jack smiles knowingly at him. “You alright down there, kiddo?”

Rhys clears his throat, but his voice still catches when he replies. “Yeah, I’m good.”

With a smug twist of his lips, Jack sheaths the sword again and turns away to place it on his desk. The line of the other man’s shoulders, the angle of his head, speaks to Rhys in an arcane way, offering him insight he should not have access to given just how cagey Jack always is with his motives.

“Did you not notice the moon thing?”  _ And get pissy when someone else did _ , Rhys adds mentally.

Slowly, Jack turns to face him. With a wry twist of his lips, Jack crosses his arms in a posture Rhys would call defensive from anyone else. “I’m gonna need you to stop being so damn observant, kiddo,” he says in a tone that almost sounds like scolding. Miraculously, he also sounds amused.

“Yeah, well,” Rhys replies slowly, staring up at Jack with his own brand of bewildered amusement, “then you’re gonna have to stop being so obvious.”

That’s enough to make Jack crack. He throws his head back in a laugh, posture uncoiling into something more open, hands falling to rest instead on his hips. Jack laughs longer and louder than the joke probably warrants, while Rhys continues to stare up at him in bemusement. If Jack can’t kill his problems, it seems his next instinct is to deflect with humor, or whatever this is. Eventually, Jack’s laugh peters out into a chuckle as he wipes a tear away from his eye almost sarcastically.

“You look good down there, cupcake.” Jack’s expression is equal parts menacing and appreciative.

Rhys can’t help but smile. Jack reveals his true self in the strangest of ways, and when someone sees him his first instinct seems to always be to lash out. But, god help him, Rhys likes it. “I look good anywhere,” Rhys reminds both Jack and himself.

Jack smiles in return, something genuine instead of cruel or mocking. “Yeah. I can’t deny that.”

Then Jack offers a hand to Rhys. Something about the gesture feels like a peace offering, and Rhys doesn’t hesitate to take it. Jack’s hand is warm and huge around his, rough from work or killing bandits or both, and the physicality of it makes Rhys shiver. He remembers how this hand felt on his body. And down his pants. Jack pulls Rhys to his feet easily, and manages to do it in such a way Rhys ends up between him and the desk, Jack’s arms hemming him in as if he might try to escape.

They’re suddenly way too close for Rhys to have anything resembling a coherent thought. His eyes flit up inexorably to Jack’s, who is smirking wickedly and leaning close. For a wild, breathless moment, Rhys thinks he’s about to be kissed, but Jack redirects at the last moment to instead trace the angle of Rhys’s jaw with his nose and breathe in deep. Rhys can’t help but shudder under the attention, his hands rising of their own accord to settle hesitantly on Jack’s hips even as he bares his throat to give the man easier access. This must have been the right move, because Jack makes a low noise of appreciation and Rhys feels the barest touch of the man’s lips on the scar he left with his teeth.

The bruises from the bite have healed, but the mark still feels just as sensitive and fresh as it did when he first woke up in Jack’s bed. Rhys makes a frankly embarrassing noise as he fights to keep his legs under him. The only points of contact between them are Rhys’s hands on Jack’s hips and Jack’s lips on his mark, but they make Rhys’s blood sing. Deciding to take some initiative here since Jack seems to be lacking, Rhys grips the man by the belt loops and pulls him closer, until their hips are flush together and-

“Sir, Mr. Vasquez from Propaganda is here for your eleven-o’clock,” says the tinny voice of an unknown woman from a speaker on Jack’s desk. It surprises Rhys enough to make him jump, nearly headbutting Jack in the process. Jack doesn’t give him any space, though, and instead crowds Rhys even further into the desk until their bodies are touching from chest to knees. 

“I’m in the middle of something, Meg, he can wait,” Jack growls before reaching past Rhys to end the call, leaning forward enough that Rhys almost loses his balance and falls flat on the desk under him. It’s only his grip on Jack’s belt loops that saves him. “That oughta make him sweat a little. Getting a little fresh there, aren’t you, kitten? Wanna show off in front of your old boss?”

“What? No!” Rhys splutters, although it's a lie and he would love to show off in front of Vasquez. “And he was only my boss for like a whole thirty seconds and it was only because he stole that promotion out from under me. I would have gotten it back but then you  _ kidnapped _ me-”

Jack gives him a knowing look before stepping away and taking all his warmth with him. “Uh huh, sure, kiddo. Listen, if there's anyone who knows a thing about hating their boss it’s me. Tell ya what, why don’t we put on a little show. Trust me, it’ll make you feel better.”

Rhys grinds his teeth at Jack’s lack of faith in his ability to get his position back on his own- he’d had a  _ plan _ , damn it- but he’s never been one to pass over an opportunity so openly handed to him. It’s a little dizzying to be switching gears so fast, but Rhys is coming to find that’s just how it is with Jack; first he’s threatening Rhys, then he’s flirting with him, and now he’s using Rhys as a prop in powerplay.

Admittedly, it’s pretty fun. Rhys likes to be kept on his toes. Even if Jack’s idea of flirting is to hold a sword to Rhys’s throat. Yeah, this is probably not healthy.

“Alright, Rhysie, I’ve got just the thing in mind, c’mere,” Jack demands cheerfully as he grabs Rhys by the shoulders and steers him around the desk before gesturing grandly at his empty chair. It really is throne-like, imposing despite being bright yellow. 

“I- You want me to sit in your chair?”

“What are you waiting for? Park it, kiddo.” Jack shoves him into the chair. Rhys’s hands grip the arms of the chair as soon as his ass hits the seat, feeling a little off balance from looking up at Jack’s face yet again. There’s a power to this chair that feels almost sacred to Rhys, and now he’s sitting in it, Handsome Jack’s place of power.

With Handsome Jack grinning down at him like he just did an amusing trick.

“What are you planning?” Rhys asks dubiously. Jack spins the chair until he has Rhys facing the rest of the room. Looking across Jack’s desk gives him an intense wave of vertigo; the throne-like chair, the massive desk, the raised dias, all of them act to make the person sitting here feel like the king of the universe. Rhys is aware this is only borrowed power, but with Jack standing beside him, one hand now on the back of his neck in a loose proprietary hold, it’s enough to make him feel like it could be real.

Gesturing the screens in front of Rhys on, Jack responds, “Pull up the information you got from this guy’s office.”

Inured to Jack’s non-answers, Rhys transmits the data from his ECHOeye to Jack’s computer while the man monologues.

“When you told me Vasquez had intel on a key I started digging into him a little more, looking into his connections, following the money. A little embezzlement is to be expected from anyone in middle management, so long as they’re not, like,  _ too _ obvious about it, then I have to kill them for it. Honestly, a million dollars isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things, it's like a bonus you only get paid if you’re wily enough, but this guy… Trying to buy a vault key right out from under my nose…” Jack audibly grinds his teeth, the sound making Rhys grimace as he stares at the image of Vasquez’s face on the screen in front of him. “Man, this guy looks so familiar and I just can’t pin down from where…. Well, I figure he’s pissed us both off, why not have a little fun?”

Rhys cranes his neck back to look up at Jack’s expectant face. “I’m not going to complain, but is this, like, some kind of bonding exercise?”

“You’re smarter than you look, aren’t you, kitten?” Rhys flushes and scowls in equal measure at the backhanded praise. Jack grins back, apparently delighting in riling him up. “When he returned to Helios after his little ‘vacation’ on Pandora the other week, security didn’t find anything amiss in his luggage. Let’s find out what he did with this ‘key’ of his.”

Hearing the derisive tone, Rhys asks, “Do you not think it was a real key?”

“There hasn’t been the kind of movement in Vasquez’s accounts to indicate he sold a key and that’s not something you want to hold onto on my station. My bet is it was a scam and our boy wasted his money on a counterfeit. Well,  _ my money, _ since he stole it.” Oh man, if it was a counterfeit, Rhys really dodged a bullet there. He’d only been moments away from sharing his plan to steal the key right from under Vasquez’s nose to Vaughn when Jack had spotted him in the hallway. Where would he be now, if Jack hadn’t kidnapped him?

Probably best not to think about it.

“So what’s my part in all this?”

Jack squeezes Rhys’s nape gently, sending a shiver of sensation down Rhys’s spine. From the glint in Jack’s eye, his reaction didn’t go unnoticed, but thankfully the other man doesn’t comment and instead just smirks down at him knowingly. “Just sit there and make him sweat, kiddo.”

“Oh, I’m gonna make him sweat alright,” Rhys responds with relish. An ugly smile bubbles to life on his face as he thinks of all the years they’ve butted heads, Vasquez constantly working to undermine and humiliate Rhys. Since they first met, they’ve been at each other's throats.

Jack just laughs at his obvious vindictive glee like Rhys did something cute. “Oh man, what’s your beef with this guy, anyway? I mean, aside from him poaching your promotion. What, did he steal your lunch from the breakroom one too many times?”

Rhys lets out an ugly laugh. “If only that was all there was to it. No, the first time I met him I caught him staring at my ass. When I called him out on it, he offered to take me to dinner sometime as a senior in my new department. You know, to ‘offer a few  _ pointers _ , give me some  _ tips _ on the culture, maybe share some  _ resources _ …’ Emphasis  _ not mine _ . I’m not above sleeping around to get ahead, but he was just so greasy about it. I turned him down and he’s held a grudge ever since.”

“Not above sleeping around, huh?” Jack asks with a painfully thin veneer of indifference.

Rolling his eyes, Rhys snips back, “I know you’ve seen me naked, or at least most of the way naked. I use everything in my arsenal, my looks included. I’m pretty good in bed, too, you would know that if you had stuck around to let me reciprocate the handjob the other day.”

Jack actually seems a little caught off guard by Rhys’s response. “I thought you were hungry.”

“Jack, you’d just had your hands down my pants moments before that. Did you not consider I might have been hungry for something else?”

The narrow-eyed look Jack gives him says Rhys is trying to tell him 2+2=5. What a baffling person, to be so intelligent about so many things and miss something so obvious.

“What I’m  _ saying _ ,” Rhys clarifies, “is that I wanted to return the favor and you just ran off to make grilled cheeses instead. No accounting for taste if you’re not into this,” Rhys gestures eloquently at his own body, ”but if you’re not into it then you don’t need to give me, like, a pity handjob or whatever that was.”

“Pity handjob!” Jack splutters. “Listen here, princess, I only do what I want and I sure as hell don’t have the capacity for  _ pity. _ ”

“Oh my  _ god, _ it’s like trying to have a reasonable conversation with a toddler,” Rhys bemoans to the ceiling. “Stop trying to derail every conversation I try to have about us.”

“Us? What is ‘us’? As far as I’m concerned there’s me, and there’s-”

“Jack, you made it an ‘us’ when you fucking chased me through Helios to bite me then kidnapped me to your  _ own apartment _ with no contact to the outside world. I’ve already told you, I’m not your pet. This is an ‘us’ situation, so you need to start acting like it.” It feels strange to be making an ultimatum to a man while Rhys sits in that man’s own chair, but whatever. He’s sick of this.

“What do you think I’ve been doing, Rhys?” Jack growls back, although it’s still a human growl and not a wolfy one.” What do you think this little outing is? Do you think I take pets to the office with me? Do you think I take  _ anyone  _ to the office with me? This is a Rhys-only treat, kiddo. What do you want from me, friendship bracelets? A promise ring?”

“Some communication, maybe?” Leaning back from the angle he had assumed while yelling, Rhys scrubs his hands over his face. “Look, I’m not mad about anything that’s happened today except for this stupid argument we’re having right now. I like the clothes and I love the new arm. I’m really looking forward to fucking with Vasquez. I would just appreciate some transparency on what you’re wanting out of all this, too.”

Tilting his head quizzically, Jack responds gruffly, “It’s like you said, a bonding exercise. I just thought it would be fun.”

“Okay, well. I’m glad you want to have fun with me. I want to have fun with you too.” God, this whole argument is weird. “But I want you to have fun too. I know I was pissed off that you weren’t, I don’t know, giving me enough attention. But you can’t just give me stuff and expect it to be enough. It’s gotta go both ways. That’s how relationships work.”

“‘Relationships.’” Jack says the word like it puts a funny taste in his mouth. “Is that what this is?”

The absurdity of this conversation is finally catching up to Rhys, so the laugh that comes out of him is a little pitchy with hysteria. “Yeah, Jack, I think at this point it’s safe to say this is a relationship.”

“Huh.” Jack replies, like he’s actually considering it. “Does this mean we’re dating?”

And if that isn’t some kind of revelation. Rhys feels like he’s been slapped with a fish. They stare at each other for a long moment in silence.

Finally, Rhys answers. “I mean, I guess we are? I can’t think of any other word for this. Although I think this was covered in my Psych 101 class.” Some kind of syndrome, although Rhys doesn’t want to say that word out loud. He really should have paid more attention in that class.

This, apparently, pleases Jack. He pokes the intercom and tells his secretary to send Vasquez in. Then he aims a devilish smirk at Rhys and says, “This counts as a date.”

And really, who is Rhys to argue.

**Author's Note:**

> i have the first few chapters of this written, just needed to start posting so i could stop picking at them and write the rest of the damn fic


End file.
